POSTSCRIPT: This website was frozen on December 31, 1999, as a permanent document on how all of us acted and reacted to the Y2K myth from 1997 to 1999. There will be no updates. Enjoy reading all of the emails, especially the wild ones from 1998. - David Robert Loblaw, 03 January 2000
It's so boring being a sceptic. (I'm a 'skeptic' when I'm in the U.S. and I'm a 'sceptic' when I'm in the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the rest of the Commonwealth.)
If you had a choice of going out to dinner with either a flamboyant Y2K spinner-of-wild tales or a monotone Y2K debunker, I know which one you'd choose. (Me too.) So don't go out to dinner with any of the following people, even if they pay:
DEBUGGING THE Y2k STORY
Written by two programmers, I highly recommend reading this clear and to-the-point expose. At the end of it are their Predictions and Recommendations. Two good quotes from the article are: "simply the amount of money being spent seems to be a major component shaping the belief of many people" and "like many other celebrities, Y2k is mostly known for being famous."
Paul Kedrosky: "Y2K advocates were like newly hatched mosquitoes. They only have a short amount of time to suck blood before they die."
"Although fans of apocalypse have always looked for any excuse to expect the worst, the millenium bug has provoked an unprecedented amount of doomsday scenario planning from otherwise sane people."
The famous article, "The Year 2000 as Racket and Ruse," by Nicholas Zvegintzov that was first published in American Programmer in February 1996. "The Year 2000 problem has three advantages that help to make it a perfect racket. First, it has a basis in reality.... Second, it is a software problem - perhaps the only software problem that lay people can easily understand.... Third, its association with the turn of the millennium plays into superstition."
"... simply call the next century, 'New 1900' ... Add a letter to the year, like 1999A, 1999B, 1999C, and so on ... name years the way we name Hurricanes and Sporting Arenas ..."
"(An) Apollo mission was so complex, that if every component was required to work correctly for the mission to succeed, then only one in five million launches would have succeeded! ... This logical flaw seems common in the way many commentators on the Y2K problem have been approaching the problem...."BACK TO MAIN PAGE
"This page explores and explains some of the background of those that claim governments will fail and financial and monetary systems will collapse. I call these people the "Doom and Gloom" set.... They are a combination of religious radicals, gun nuts, and book sellers."
"I asked my local banker for a repayment schedule for a 35-year, $250,000 home loan. It took some computer inputting on his part (he typed with one finger) and the nearby printer delivered a schedule into 2032. How did he do it? The banker laughed when I told him about the gloom and doom forecast for the year 2000."
"Yes, fixing the Year 2000 bug is causing alarm and costing billions. But it's also goading many offices to improve. Past turn-of-century celebrants have sometimes included end-of-the-world groups led by prophets of doom. In our technology-driven age, it's perhaps not surprising that a millennium computer bug has spawned prophets of techno-doom."
"The Year 2000 is a hoax. The compu-world won't crash, the planet won't be paralyzed, and chaos will not reign... at least no more than usual."
"The threat that computers won't be able to handle the year-number rollover to 2000 is not glowing too hot on my radar screen."
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Read some e-mails
